Our confrontation with Christmas has moved from the courtrooms to the living
rooms

http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THERE WAS A TIME when the prevailing attitude among most American Jews toward
Christmas was one of all-out war. Not that we begrudged our neighbors their
joyous December holiday. It was just that no other manifestation of our
minority status in this country threatened us so much as the days leading up
to Dec. 25.

For 11 months of the year, Jews could pretend that the traditional formula of
American civic peace — equality among Protestant, Catholic and Jew — was one
where no one was a junior partner. But from the end of the Thanksgiving Day
parade to Christmas Day, there was no mistaking the fact that American Jews
were living in a country with an overwhelmingly Christian population and a
popular culture which reflected that fact.

Prior to World War II, when the majority of American Jews were immigrants or
the children of immigrants, our response to the onslaught of the Christmas s
pirit was generally one of grin and bear it. Lacking the self-confidence to
assert Jewish identity in the public square, Jewish children sang along with
the Christmas carols in public schools with few protests.

That would change in the postwar era, as a new and commendable spirit of
assertiveness prevailed in our communal life. Determined not to have to put
up with someone else’s religion being shoved down our throats, timidity was
replaced with a spirit of litigiousness. Our defense organizations, in
coalition with other groups, prevailed upon American courts to put limits not
only on prayer in the public schools, but also on the extent to which the
Christmas holidays are officially celebrated by governmental institutions.

As a reaction to a legal and cultural tradition that treated non-Christian
traditions as un-American, this counterattack was entirely justified. But at
some point in the last generation, it morphed into something slightly
different.

ANNUAL COMMUNAL CONNIPTION FIT
December has become the season of the annual Jewish communal conniption fit,
where some of us act as if our primary method of expressing Jewish identity
is to cry foul if someone, somewhere, is singing a Christmas carol on public
property.

Chief among the threats from Christmas has been the ubiquitous tree. If the
prime motivation for many Jews was assimilation in the prewar era, then going
along with the celebration of this Christian holiday was a price many were
willing to pay. Jews putting up Christmas trees in their homes became the
hated symbol of assimilation, if not of an abandonment of Jewish identity and
pride.

Ironically, most Christians tend to think of the tree as a nonreligious
symbol. Indeed, it is a holdover from German pagan traditions that became
popular only in the 19th century. U.S. courts, even in the last half-century,
when separation of religion and state has become a key aspect of American
law, recognize the tree as a secular rather than a religious symbol.

That has always seemed wrong to me. But then again, I have trouble
understanding Christmas as a purely secular holiday.

That stems, in large part, from my own experience growing up in a largely
non-Jewish town. As the only Jewish kid in my elementary-school class, I
resented each December bitterly as my largely secular environment was
transformed into a Christmas wonderland. My family chose not to make Chanukah
into a Jewish Christmas, and I was plainly jealous of the fact that my
Christian friends all seemed to have what I considered to be a second
birthday on Christmas.

But as I grew older, I realized that while December was a month in which I
could feel like a stranger in my own land, there was nothing in Christmas
that threatened my liberties or my well-being. As long as I was a proud Jew
and certain of my own faith and identity, nothing that my neighbors sang
(even in school) or hung on their houses diminished me or made me any less
than their equal.
INTERMARRIAGE CHANGES THE EQUATION
But even as we have come to terms with life in America every December, the
idea of Jews celebrating Christmas still smacks of assimilation and surrender
for many, if not most of us.

The question is, in an era when intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews has
become commonplace, the American Jewish confrontation with Christmas has
moved from the courtrooms to the living rooms of a growing plurality of
Jewish families. And, as recent surveys — such as one released by the
American Jewish Committee — have shown, as acceptance of intermarriage
grows, so too must our acceptance of the cherished customs of the non-Jewish
partners of our relatives.

Once, the Christmas tree was the symbol of the Jew seeking to escape his
heritage. Today, we worry about the sight of a living room where a tree sits
alongside a Chanukah menorah.

What this acceptance means for the future of American Jewry is far from
certain. Optimists see it as an opportunity for outreach to non-Jewish
spouses. Though some hope for a large-scale communal effort that will promote
conversion to Judaism, much of the literature on this topic seems to be more
about accommodation of the two faiths. That is understandable, and perhaps
even appropriate, since the religion of the non-Jew in an intermarriage is
deserving of the same respect as that of the Jewish partner.

But as much as I think hostility to Christmas smacks of a lack of
self-assurance on the part of Jews, it is far from clear to me how a strong
Jewish identity can be fostered in homes where a clear delineation between
what is Jewish and what is non-Jewish is absent.

If the realities of intermarriage are convincing increasing numbers of
American Jews to ease up on their unwillingness to accommodate themselves to
non-Jewish customs in their own homes, then we have reached a point where the
prime threat to Jewish identity is no longer in the public square or the
public school, but inside our own families.

If this realization doesn’t motivate American Jews as a community to stop
obsessing about the separation of church and state and start concentrating on
projects that reinforce Jewish identity, then nothing will. It was one thing
to try and insulate ourselves from the non-Jewish world by blocking out
Christmas. It’s another to attempt to ignore the family member who celebrates
it.